Making Things Difficult

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 In his fascinating book Smarter, Faster, Better, Charles Duhigg contrasts students who take hand written notes with those who take notes with lap tops.  According to him, research shows that students curating lesson materials using hand written notes out perform their more tech savvy counterparts.

Hand writing slows these students, and proves to work against fluid actions.  This difficulty assists learning.

I a aware of the benefits of hand written notes from other previous readings to.  In addition to disfluency it promotes better connection without ever fascinating brain.

I think this knowledge has benefitted me.  For example, unlike tech savvy smart phone users, my typing skills suck on smart phones.  I had to retype the word typing three times in the previous sentence, for example.  I kept fat fingering it to”ryping”.  My iPhone cannot even come up with a suggestion.

Slowing down this way or being challenged by disfluency really slows me down and forces me to think.  That is why I currently use my iPhone to blog.

On the other hand, my skills are improving.  I wonder what will happen when I become brilliant at typing with my iPhone.

I guess it will probably be a mixed blessing - more fluent blogging without the benefit of thoughtful pauses…

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